


For Science

by Titty_Now_Titty_Later (orphan_account)



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi's mum is texting, Fluff, M/M, for science, kuroo is mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-23
Updated: 2016-01-23
Packaged: 2018-05-15 17:40:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5793817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/Titty_Now_Titty_Later
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Quick, we need to passionately make out for science</p><p>(Except it's not very quick, it's not very passionate and Akaashi really doesn't know how this could help any field of science.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	For Science

**Author's Note:**

> [Inspiration.](http://jiriboys.tumblr.com/post/65855172991/quick-we-need-to-passionately-make-out-for)
> 
> This was meant to be a very short piece wherein Bokuto arrives at Akaashi's with ulterior motives. That... didn't really happen. Bokuto's far too pure to have ulterior motives.

“AKAASHI!” The yell resounded through the house, growing closer as the middle syllable stretched out. Akaashi’s phone vibrated against the desk next to his elbow.

_> >From: Birth-Giver_ _  
_ _Your loud friend is here_

He sighed quietly and pulled the phone closer so he could tap out a reply heedless of his bedroom door erupting open and a large pile of Bokuto falling in.

_> >To: Birth-Giver_ _  
_ _Gathered that, thanks anyway_

“Akaashi, thank god you’re home!” Bokuto yelled from where he was standing in the doorway, arms held out dramatically. “I have a biology exam tomorrow!”

Akaashi locked eyes warily with the wild animal that was standing in his bedroom and yelling something that had very little to do with Akaashi himself. Silence stretched for a whole second before he realised Bokuto was waiting for some kind of response. “So?”

_ “So,”  _ Bokuto moaned and collapsed to his knees, “I have to  _ study  _ and I  _ haven’t  _ and Kuroo’s being horrible and not letting me have his notes or anything and I need  _ help!” _

Akaashi took a deep, slow breath and placed his pen down carefully on his desk before speaking. “Bokuto. Kuroo goes to a different school. I don’t think he’s even studying biology.”

A brief wash of confusion flashed over Bokuto’s face before he muttered, “Oh. Yeah, I think you’re right.” Akaashi managed to get a sigh in before Bokuto started up again, exclaiming, “But that just means you gotta help me  _ more  _ because this way Kuroo  _ definitely  _ won’t help!”

“I feel like you often forget,” Akaashi murmured wearily, “that I’m actually in the year  _ below  _ you.”

“Yeah, but you’re a genius so it’s not like it matters,” Bokuto said lightly while he stepped into the room and threw himself onto Akaashi’s bed. “So you’re gonna help, right?”

“I honestly don’t know what I’ve said that gives you that impression,” he responded exhaustedly, spinning in his chair to face Bokuto. “I was busy studying for my  _ own  _ tests, actually.”

_ “What?”  _ Bokuto demanded and sat up abruptly, his gold eyes wide. “No  _ way!  _ C’mon, you gotta! If I don’t pass this semester then I probably won’t have enough credits to graduate! And then I’ll... have to repeat...” His desperate tone drifted into one of contemplation and his brows crinkled in concentration. “Mm... and then I’d be in your grade, so I could study with you and get your answers all the time!” he concluded, eyes lighting up.

“ _ No,”  _ Akaashi said firmly and stood up. He picked up the bag Bokuto had dropped in the middle of his room and unizipped it, pulling out the heavy biology textbook. He was surprised Bokuto had actually remembered to bring it. “You’re  _ not  _ failing this class,” he said firmly and dropped the book in Bokuto’s lap.

It fell onto the floor with a heavy  _ thunk  _ when Bokuto threw himself backwards and whooped loudly. Akaashi sighed in tandem with his phone buzzing on the desk.

>> _From: Birth-Giver_ _  
_ _Can you please close the door? I’m trying to work. Thanks x_

Ignoring Bokuto’s antics he typed out his reply while he stepped to the door and nudged it closed.

>> _To: Birth-Giver_ _  
_ _Sorry, got it. I’ll try keep him quiet_

“Who are you texting?” Bokuto demanded while he kicked his heels against Akaashi’s sheets.

“My mother.”

“But she’s home, right?” Bokuto asked with a confused frown. “How come she doesn’t just talk?”

“She’s trying to work,” he said as explanation when he bent down to pick up the textbook then changed his mind and just sat down on the floor beside it. “She wants us to be quieter,” he added, hoping Bokuto would take a hint and lower his voice a few decibels. 

“Huh,” Bokuto mused, shuffling around on the bed until he was lying on his stomach and his head was hanging off the edge beside Akaashi’s shoulder. “Mine would just yell at me to shut up.”

“I feel like that’s the only thing that would work,” Akaashi muttered in an undertone and he heard Bokuto’s laugh spill out next to his ear. It was obnoxious and annoying and Akaashi wished he could fault it. “What unit are you studying?” he asked with the book held open to the contents page.

“Dunno,” Bokuto grunted and made grabby fingers at his bag.

Akaashi sighed and leaned forwards to drag it closer and handed it to Bokuto for him to rummage through. After too many seconds of unnecessary ‘I’m trying’ sounds he finally fell back down with his glasses shoved on his nose. 

“Something about genetic drift, I think. Pretty sure the teacher mentioned that.”

“You’ve been studying this for  _ months,”  _ Akaashi muttered under his breath. One of Bokuto’s shoulders shoved him in the back of the head when he shrugged. “So it’s probably evolution and stuff, right?” Akaashi made an educated guess and turned to the indicated page number. 

“I guess so?” Bokuto hazarded. “See? You’re already better at this than I am.”

“Whatever,” Akaashi muttered. “Does this chapter look familiar?” He held the book up for Bokuto to take, but Bokuto should really not be handed things when he’s lying on his stomach because it just makes everything about ten times more difficult than it has to be.

Apparently his hands had been tucked under his chest and had to wrench them out from under his body, which included smacking Akaashi in the side of the head (”Sorry,  _ sorry  _ Akaashi!”) and then awkwardly trying to arrange his arms to one side so he could hold the book. He apparently deemed it too difficult a pose to maintain and decided to just loop one arm around Akaashi’s neck and hold the book up in front of both of them.

“Comfortable?” Akaashi asked dryly. 

“Mm,” Bokuto hummed distractedly while he scanned the page, then attempted to turn to the next one. This included bringing his hands together and thus pressing his and Akaashi’s faces uncomfortably close. “Yeah, this looks like it,” Bokuto concluded, voice too close to Akaashi’s ear.

“Okay,” Akaashi nodded and tried  _ very  _ hard to swallow quietly. “Okay, so... do you remember any specifics?” he asked after succeeding.

Bokuto made another deep thinking sound that seemed to resonate with something delicious in Akaashi’s ear made him lick his lips. “We were talking about... transitional? Transitive. Transitive forms or - fossils or something.”

“Do you know what a transitive fossil is?” Akaashi asked and reached his hands up to take the book from Bokuto. Rather than retract them to their original position under his chest and risk injuring someone Bokuto apparently decided simply let them fall where they were. Which meant he was essentially draped around Akaashi with his chin digging uncomfortably into Akaashi’s shoulder while he looked down at the book in his lap. Akaashi almost wished he’d been smacked in the head again.

“Isn’t it some kind of evolution thing?” Bokuto muttered petulantly. “Like, between a dolphin and a whatever-it-was-before?”

Akaashi sighed and glanced over the explanation the chapter provided. “Yeah, something like that,” he conceded. It was close enough. “Okay, what about...” He paused to read the word carefully before saying it. “What about vestigial limbs?”

“I don’t  _ know,”  _ Bokuto moaned and bumped his head gently against Akaashi’s. “Like, when you get your leg amputated but you can still feel it?”

“Um,” Akaashi muttered to fill the air while he quickly read over the paragraph. “No. Not even close. Though it was an impressive attempt. I think you’re talking about phantom limbs.”

“It’s the same thing!” Bokuto groaned and kicked his feet against the sheets again. “I don’t know this stuff; I’m super bad at remembering things like this,” he complained. One of his fingers traced over the paragraph and if Akaashi turned his head slightly he could see his captain’s eyes narrow in concentration behind the frames of his glasses. He cast his gaze quickly back to the textbook and stubbornly ignored just  _ where  _ Bokuto would be pointing if that damned (blessed) book wasn’t in the way.

“It’s basically a limb you don’t use anymore but it hasn’t completely disappeared because it’s also not getting in the way.”

“Like your appendix?” Bokuto asked confusedly, frowning harder at the text. “But like, a whole limb instead of an organ.”

“That,” Akaashi said blankly, “is surprisingly accurate.”

Bokuto’s mouth spread into a grin and he turned his head sharply so their noses were quite suddenly almost touching. “That’s right?” he demanded excitedly into Akaashi’s face.

“Yeah,” he said plainly and turned to look back down at the book, ignoring his frantic pulse. “Honestly, I’m not going to be able to teach you this stuff,” he muttered and picked the book up to press it against Bokuto’s face. “You just have to read this and write some notes about what you think is important.”

“But I don’t  _ know  _ what’s important!” Bokuto whined from behind the book and made no move to take it off Akaashi.

“You’re not an idiot, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi said and dropped the book back into his lap so he could frown at his idiot captain directly. “You’re just acting like one.”

“It’s not an act!” Bokuto exclaimed, too insulted to take the praise. “I’ve always had shitty luck with biology.”

“Maybe because you seem to believe  _ luck  _ has anything to do with your success in the subject,” Akaashi sighed and let his head fall back on top of the bed - on top of Bokuto’s shoulder, actually, considering his arm was still draped around Akaashi’s neck. “It’s all in your head already. You just have to go over it every once in a while - you know,  _ study.” _

“I never have time to study,” Bokuto pouted. “We practice for hours every afternoon - as in  _ we  _ do, even if there’s no team practice scheduled. And when I get home mum wants me to do all this cleaning stuff and it takes  _ ages  _ and by the time I’m done I just want to shower, wank and sleep.”

“Ugh,” Akaashi sighed in disgust and turned his head away from Bokuto. “I don’t think  _ anyone  _ wants to hear about that, Bokuto-san.”

“You can’t tell me you never do it, Akaashi,” Bokuto jibed, shrugging his shoulder to jostle Akaashi’s head. “Don’t be such a hippo’s clit.”

Akaashi’s face twisted into one of proper disgust. “A  _ hypocrite?  _ I’m not. I’m not saying I  _ don’t  _ I just don’t go yelling about it to whoever’s forced to listen.”

The huff of Bokuto’s smirk passed over Akaashi’s turned cheek. “So you  _ do?” _

Akaashi turned his head back just so he could pin Bokuto with his most unimpressed stare. “You should be studying, not trying to pry into my personal life.”

“Oh,  _ come on,”  _ Bokuto laughed and nudged his forehead against Akaashi’s. “I practically  _ am  _ your personal life. I’m allowed to wonder what you get up to in the few hours you’re not basking in my presence.”

“You’re really not,” Akaashi refuted, pretending he wasn’t blushing. Bokuto was being delusional again and it  _ sucked.  _ He decided to tell him that, just so he understood where they stood. “You’re being delusional and it sucks.”

Bokuto hummed in distant appreciation and murmured, “Yes, my delusions do indeed suck.”

Akaashi’s brain short-circuited briefly while he stared incredulously at Bokuto. It kicked back online with a firm,  _ “No.  _ No, absolutely  _ not.”  _ He ducked his head out from under Bokuto’s arm and said with no uncertainty, “We are  _ not  _ talking about what you fantasise when you’re alone, Bokuto-san. You are reading this book,” he pushed the open textbook into Bokuto’s face again and this time Bokuto’s hands came up to collect it, “and I am going to finish my own study and try forget you ever tried to have this conversation with me.”

“Why are you so embarrassed?” Bokuto laughed. “Me ‘n Kuroo talk about this stuff all the time.”

“Maybe, but neither you nor Kuroo seem to have any boundaries so that really doesn’t surprise me,” Akaashi stated, still glaring from his seat on the floor - though he had scooted a couple of feet away from Bokuto’s toxic presence.

“Alright, fine, keep living your boring life devoid of the things that I know,” Bokuto tried to sniff pointedly but broke it with a snort of laughter. At least he was shuffling back on the bed so he could look down at the textbook. 

“Why would I  _ want  _ to know,” Akaashi muttered and stretched to pull his English textbook off the desk to join him on the floor.

“Why  _ wouldn’t  _ you?” Bokuto countered instinctively but Akaashi could tell - thank any and all gods - that his attention had drifted from the conversation to the book in front of him.

Half afraid of spurring the subject back to life and half believing the statement didn’t even deserve a response Akaashi answered with silence. After a few minutes he’d settled back against the bed again and had the book propped up on his knees with one hand gripping his ankle and the other splayed across the page. Bokuto hadn’t made much noise except from vague sounds of understanding or frustration and the occasional rustle of a page turning.

Akaashi was very aware the silence couldn’t last and was actually relieved it had continued for as long as it had when Bokuto finally spoke again. “You know, Kuroo says it makes you live longer.” He still sounded mostly focused on the book. He was probably talking just to fill the silence.

Akaashi wanted to grit his teeth but if he did that every time Bokuto said something stupid he would already have ground them to dust. Additionally, without any context Bokuto had practically forced him to join the conversation. “What are you talking about?” he muttered, eyes narrowing at the page in front of him.

“Wanking,” Bokuto supplied in the same distracted tone as before. Akaashi stiffened sharply enough for Bokuto to look up. “What?” he asked, genuinely confused.

“I thought you’d dropped this subject,” Akaashi sighed, forcing his shoulders to unwind.

“Nah,” Bokuto said and Akaashi felt the bed shudder when he tried to shrug. There was another brief silence during which they both went back to reading before Bokuto spoke up again. “What do you think?”

“I think it’s bullshit and we should stop talking about it.”

“‘Kay,” he agreed readily.

After a few seconds there was the dry sound of a page turning from behind him. Akaashi was still staring at the same paragraph. “Why do you want to talk about it so much?” he asked, frowning. Seriously, how often did he and Kuroo get together and talk about that kind of thing? How important was it to their friendship? Akaashi couldn’t imagine having a serious conversation about it with  _ anyone,  _ let alone his closest friend… Let alone Bokuto, that is.

“I dunno,” his captain hummed and flicked the corners of the pages between his fingers. It was a fiddly habit Akaashi recognised from whenever Bokuto was trying to act nonchalant -  _ trying  _ being the operative word. “It’s just something to talk about. It’s not a big deal for either of us, so.” Akaashi felt him shrug again. 

After another brief silence Akaashi said quietly, “I can’t believe you still thought Kuroo was doing biology after he told you something like that.”

Bokuto snorted out a laugh and Akaashi felt the corners of his mouth twitch up. “Kuroo’s an idiot,” he giggled and it was Akaashi’s turn to let a small laugh escape.

“You’re both idiots. You’re the one who believed him,” he retorted, not bothering to stifle his grin.

“He sounded like he knew what he was talking about!” Bokuto defended with another laugh while he bounced on the bed to wriggle closer. “What’s this?” he asked and dangled the book in front of Akaashi. “This-” Between trying to hold his torso off the bed, prop the book in front of Akaashi and gesture to the part he needed help with Bokuto ended up falling sideways and butting his head against Akaashi’s.  _ “Ow,”  _ he complained, but at least he was in a position where he could point out the problematic section. He quickly proceeded to do so. “This thing about the human ancestors or whatever. I don’t get it.”

“It’s just asking what animal we’re closest to genetically,” Akaashi muttered and straightened, having turned his head to read the tilted book. “You should know that anyway, regardless of if you do biology.  _ Kuroo  _ probably knows this.”

_ “But,”  _ he whined and shoved the book onto Akaashi’s lap, on top of the English text he’d been reading, “it just said in the last paragraph that we  _ didn’t  _ evolve from chimps. So, like… what?” he gestured helplessly at the book and rested his cheek on his hand. His hand pressed his lips into a pout and pushed his glasses askew but his carefully-gelled hair looked like it had already been run through a few times in frustration over this question so Akaashi didn’t bother to point out Bokuto’s messy presentation.

“Just look at the tree,” Akaashi instructed and pointed at the diagram on the opposite page. “There was all of us, then orangutans branched off and a little bit further down humans and chimpanzees separated.”

_ “So?”  _ Bokuto asked exhaustedly. His hand slipped and he let himself land face-down in Akaashi’s shoulder. “Isn’t that the same thing? We all evolved from chimps, who came from orangutans?”

Akaashi pulled in a deep, quiet breath before answering simply, “No.” 

“How?” Bokuto drew out the question despite his voice being muffled by Akaashi’s shoulder. 

This time he just sighed. “I can’t explain it to you; you’ll have to ask your teacher in the morning before the exam starts.”

“So you  _ get  _ it, but you can’t explain it?” Bokuto asked, voice growing dejected. 

“Sorry,” Akaashi muttered with a shrug that shoved Bokuto’s head. 

“Why can’t I just  _ get  _ it like you?” Bokuto moaned. He didn’t seem to have any plans of leaving Akaashi’s shoulder anytime soon. “Why can’t I just naturally understand stuff like this?”

“Your natural talents far outweigh mine, Bokuto-san,” Akaashi murmured. “I might have an affinity with academia but I’ve never met anyone who can parallel your determination and passion when it comes to things of a physical aspect.”

“Are you calling me buff?” Bokuto muttered without moving from his place.

“I’m saying you’re  _ driven.” _

There were a few seconds of silence before Bokuto gave a very exaggerated sigh that was more of a frustrated yell than anything. “I don’t even know the difference between the things you’re saying. How the hell should I know the difference between a human and a chimp?”

“Have you ever  _ seen  _ a chimp?” Akaashi asked dryly and it surprised a snort out of Bokuto. With a quiet sigh Akaashi lifted his hand and placed it in Bokuto’s mess of hair. He’d unsealed most of the gel by running his fingers through it and so it held more than a hint of how soft it would be without any product. Akaashi was stupid for imagining just how that would feel. “If you go in early with me tomorrow you’ll have ages to ask your teacher anything you don’t understand,” he reassured.

“What time are you going in?” Bokuto muttered, clearly weighing his options.

“About the same time as we would go in for practice,” he answered and continued to run his fingers gently through Bokuto’s hair. 

Neither of them seemed to realise the lapse into silence until, a few minutes later, Akaashi’s fingers had worked across Bokuto’s head and found the nape of his neck. He made a long, low, appreciative sound and seemed to unravel, sprawling out when every muscle in his body gave up on holding him together. Akaashi’s fingers paused and he turned his head to look at Bokuto’s face.

His head had fallen sideways while Akaashi had been running his fingers through his hair and his eyes were closed, mouth agape. His glasses were shoved onto his forehead but he really did not seem to care about the way the bridge was digging into his eyebrow. Akaashi reached around with his other hand to pluck them off his face before the frames got bent and folded them neatly on the floor beside him. “You okay?” he murmured and moved his fingers again experimentally. 

“Please don’t stop.” Bokuto said, more a huff of breath than actual words. 

“Mm-mm,” Akaashi hummed and shook his head, withdrawing his hand. “You need to study.”

“I can study like this,” Bokuto slurred without opening his eyes. 

“No,” Akaashi refuted and glanced at his phone screen to check the time. It was getting a little late. Iit wasn’t that Bokuto lived very far away but Akaashi wanted to make sure he actually went to sleep, rather than call Kuroo to try relieve stress and end up staying awake until the sun came up. “Do you want to stay the night? You can duck home in the morning to change your clothes before we go to school.”

“Wanna sleep,” he muttered and yawned right in Akaashi’s face without bothering to cover his mouth.

Akaashi scrunched up his nose but opened a new message to his mum anyway.

_> >To: Birth-Giver_ _  
_ _Can Bokuto stay the night? Want to make sure he actually goes to sleep._

Less than half a minute later his phone buzzed in his hand.

_> >From: Birth-Giver_ _  
_ _Sure, as long as he doesn’t sleep loudly too. Set the futon up in your room, just in case_

Akaashi snorted out a laugh and poked Bokuto’s arm. “You can stay if you want. Mum wants you in here cause she thinks you’ll sleep too loud in the living area.”

“She’s probably right,” Bokuto agreed through another yawn and crawled into a sitting position.

“Try not to make a mess while I get your bed sorted,” Akaashi instructed and left to gather the futon and spare linen to make up Bokuto’s bed. 

When he got back Bokuto had actually crawled under the covers of Akaashi’s bed and was reclining on the pillows with his arm thrown across his eyes. 

“I know you just went to get a futon or something,” he muttered without shifting his arm, “but seriously can you just leave me here? It’s a double bed anyway.”

Akaashi thought about kicking him out anyway, but it was coming up to ten o’clock -  _ somehow;  _ he remembered it being closer to seven-thirty when Bokuto had kicked down his door - and he was tired too. So instead he sighed and dropped the bedding in a corner. “Whatever,” he muttered. “But I’m not wearing my school clothes to sleep because of you,” he added when he stooped to pick their books and Bokuto’s glasses off the floor to put them on the desk. 

“‘S not like I am either,” Bokuto muttered and Akaashi saw his shirt crumpled on the floor beside the bed. His eyes widened for a moment and he glanced around quickly for his pants but couldn’t see them - which hopefully meant Bokuto was still wearing them. 

Akaashi breathed a quiet sigh of relief and unbuttoned his own shirt, folding it over the back of his chair before turning off the light and stepping carefully around to the other side of the bed. He didn’t particularly  _ want  _ to wear his pants to sleep but if Bokuto was sharing that small space then it would be  _ weird  _ if he took them off. A small yawn fronting as a sigh caught itself on his lips and he pressed the back of his hand up to cover it while he slipped into the bed, feeling Bokuto shift aside to accommodate him. 

“Night, Akaashi.”

So that was it? They were just going to fall asleep together? Akaashi couldn’t exactly think of anything else to do except maybe talk awkwardly until one of them crashed - but then again, Bokuto had already spoken an awful lot and Akaashi really was ready to sleep. “Goodnight, Bokuto-san,” he murmured into the darkness. His eyelids drifted shut and he let his breathing even out. He didn’t know how he could sleep with Bokuto lying restlessly beside him but he was determined to try. 

He should have known the silence would only last a few minutes, after all. “Hey, Akaashi?”

“What, Bokuto-san?” he sighed.

“Do you think kissing someone can also extend your lifetime?” 

What a… stupid question. And he was asking so genuinely. Despite his irritation the corners of Akaashi’s lips lifted. “Did Kuroo tell you that too?”

Bokuto’s quiet, breathy laugh filled the air between them. “Yeah,” he admitted. Another few seconds stretched emptily before he asked, “But aren’t you curious?”

“About what?” Akaashi asked, ready to drift off as soon as Bokuto allowed him a few more minutes of uninterrupted silence.

His voice seemed a lot smaller when he answered and Akaashi cracked open an eye to glance at his silhouette. “About whether it’s true.” He was facing Akaashi, but he couldn’t make out anything of his expression.

“How would you find out?” Akaashi asked after a brief moment, voice dropping in volume to match Bokuto’s. 

“Well, it’s not like you’d have anything to lose,” Bokuto’s voice said in a murmur between them. “I mean you get to live longer and even if it doesn’t work at least you’ll be getting to kiss someone. Right?”

Akaashi hummed in agreement and they drifted back into silence. This time, however, it was him who broke it. “Do you think it’s true?” he asked. He turned so he was on his side facing Bokuto, mirroring his position.

“There’s no real way to tell, right?” Bokuto said, offhand, and Akaashi was inclined to agree but the suggestion had gotten them this far and it would seem like a wasted chance to back off.

“If you want to be sure, though,” he whispered, watching the Bokuto-shadow carefully. 

“Do you want to be sure?” Bokuto asked in a matching whisper. 

Because it was getting ridiculous, the way they were dancing around it, Akaashi untangled a hand from the blankets and pressed his fingers gently to Bokuto’s jaw. He traced the sharp line slowly until he found Bokuto’s chin and his thumb was brushing over Bokuto’s lower lip. He could feel the slow, calm come-and-go of Bokuto’s breath against his thumb - and against his lips when he leaned closer. “I’m pretty certain,” he whispered. He was glad he didn’t have to raise his voice any louder, because if he had Akaashi was certain it would have cracked. As it was, the hand marking Bokuto’s jaw was trembling slightly and stilled only when he felt Bokuto’s own calloused fingertips skate gently across his cheek. 

“Me too,” Bokuto responded. He was close enough that those words themselves became the kiss that they’d been waiting for. It was rather boring, as far as kisses go. Clumsy because they couldn’t see one another, close-lipped because they were as nervous as - well, as teenagers kissing for the first time - and short because they were both very very breathless. 

Akaashi’s heart was beating in his trembling fingertips but it was okay because he could hear Bokuto’s in his shaking breath. Honestly, he felt like his lifespan was about to be cut short rather than elongated.

“I don’t know if that worked,” Bokuto said, and his whisper trembled too. “I feel like I’m gonna explode.”

“Mm,” Akaashi hummed in agreement. “Maybe we should try again, to be sure.”

Bokuto’s breathless laugh brushed across his lips. “Maybe.” His whole body was quivering slightly, overflowing with nervous energy.

Akaashi drifted his fingers back along Bokuto’s jaw and under his ear, making him shudder. He wove them into the soft hair at the back of Bokuto’s head and massaged gently, feeling him relax one muscle at a time. “Should we try again?” he asked quietly, feeling Bokuto unravel.

“Yeah,” he nodded, voice quiet but far less tense. “Yeah, we should.” He leaned forwards and pressed their lips together. It was still clumsy and their noses definitely squished together before Akaashi tilted his head to a better angle, but this time he could feel something warm and indescribable flooding his chest. 

“I think we’re going to need a lot more data before we can make an accurate assumption,” Akaashi murmured when they’d parted again and regained their breath. 

Bokuto ducked his head to laugh between them just as the warmth in Akaashi’s heart reached his fingertips. “I’ll make out with you for science any day, Akaashi,” he whispered and the warmth in his voice echoed what was suffusing Akaashi’s body. 

“For science,” he repeated like a toast and tried to bite back a smirk. Bokuto found the smile anyway when he pressed their lips together again - and again and again. 

They had to be very, very thorough in their research. 


End file.
